What is Tenure and how is it calculated?

The Tenure of a user or an account is an essential data point when assessing product engagement.

Tenure is the answer to the question: How long has this user/account been with us?

In Sherlock, Tenure is a trait we hold dear. On any user or account detail page, you can view Tenure, but more importantly, Tenure is a trait you can use to segment your users/accounts.

How does Sherlock calculate Tenure?

We use the standard createdAt trait to calculate Tenure. This is a trait you can pass at the user as well as at the account level (using Segment's Group call). The calculation is pretty simple:

• For user tenure, we simply subtract the createdAt date from TODAY.
• For account tenure, we look first for a createdAt trait on the Group-level. If one does not exist, we look for the createdAt trait for the users on that account and subtract the earliest data from TODAY. This calculation takes a bit longer, so using createdAt at the Group level is definitely recommended.

If you are not using the createdAt trait for users or accounts, we will not be able to calculate Tenure in Sherlock :/